George H.W. Bush coined the phrase when he topped Ronald Reagan in the 1980 Iowa Republican caucuses. He said “Big Mo” was on his side.

Another Texas Republican, Gov. Rick Perry, may not yet have “Big Mo” on his side in the 2012 presidential race, but he does have a little bit of “Little Mo” — or at least mojo — working for him in Iowa these days.

Perry, who’s mulling a 2012 presidential run, is not formally participating in August’s Iowa Republican straw poll in Ames, but he managed to emerge the victor of an Iowa county GOP straw poll.

“There seemed to be a lot of enthusiasm in the whole group there about the strong possibility of (Perry’s) joining the race,” Clay County GOP chairwoman Kirstine Thiessen told POLITICO.